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The Promised LAN

tpl.house

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Re: The Promised LAN

#31

Post by joaohkfaria »

Creating all of this is cool, but I don't know, it looks like a gimmick.

The whole argument is: "Every other page I find myself on now has an AI generated click-bait title, shared for rage-clicks all brought-to-you-by-our-sponsors–completely covered wall-to-wall with popup modals, telling me how much they respect my privacy"

Well, you'll still need content outside your friends group. Even with the "Promised LAN" you'll continue having the same experience.

And what for? What are the use cases? Exchange files? Jokes? Chatting? The examples given: "It’s incredible how much network transport and a trusting culture gets you—there’s a 3-node IRC network, exotic hardware to gawk at, radios galore, a NAS storage swap, LAN only email, and even a SIP phone network of “redphones”."

Ok, fun. But you'll still need WhatsApp/Facetime to talk to your mom, the whole internet to search and learn, sometimes social networks to communicate or to get a job, etc etc etc.

Re: The Promised LAN

#32

Post by icedchai »

smashed wrote: post #30
CursedSilicon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably use L2TP with IPsec to get Layer 2 transit. Doing that over Wireguard would require Gretep or something similar

Not sure they are using l2 transit. They are using BGP and routing nodes (backbones), recreating a mini IP (layer 3) network I think. I've used raw wireguard in a p2p fashion to interconnect LANs. I run wireguard on each segment directly inside the network routers. Just make sure all LANs are using a different subnet. A /24 is standard. Then configure all the peers and you get a fully peer to peer network. No relays.…

I have my own Wireguard mesh network between my home network and a couple of VPSes. I configured it all manually, too. I'm basically running a virtual public network and have it routing a /24 (BGP announced at the VPSes) back to my home.

Re: The Promised LAN

#33

Post by NewsaHackO »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #7

No description of the games they even play? It's an interesting idea. But it sounds like one big "no girls allowed" kind of treehouse with how minimally forthcoming they are about documentation

This seems like way to much effort for playing video games which can be done easier with discord. With how tight lipped they are with what their actual service is, it gives off file sharing vibes.

Re: The Promised LAN

#34

Post by haddr »

archi42 wrote: post #17

The page contains link to a manifesto/description: https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/ I think that's a more interesting read than the linked page.

Actually the manifesto is linked in the second paragraph. Reading this page and then the manifesto was good experience for me.

Re: The Promised LAN

#35

Post by sleepyams »

kentonv wrote: post #28

Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to i…

This is a pretty amazing setup! I think in 2025 I would definitely prefer something like this. However, I think back in "the day" part of what made LAN parties fun was that everyone's PC was so individualized. I remember all of my high school friends and I coming of age and building our PCs. I helped a lot of my friends build their PCs and we all chose different things (such as the amount of RGB LEDs, which I thought were tacky...). I remember a friend of a friend had a water cooling system and I was so excited about checking it out. Also, things like the desktop wallpaper you chose, etc, contributed to this. There was something very magical about it all. Lugging our PCs to each others houses was a real labor of love.

Re: The Promised LAN

#36

Post by benreesman »

joaohkfaria wrote: post #31

Creating all of this is cool, but I don't know, it looks like a gimmick. The whole argument is: "Every other page I find myself on now has an AI generated click-bait title, shared for rage-clicks all brought-to-you-by-our-sponsors–completely covered wall-to-wall with popup modals, telling me how much they respect my privacy" Well, you'll still need content outside your friends group. Even with the "Promised LAN" you'…

Eh, I'm not sure how gimmicky it is. Without knowing how it's used, maybe the use of the network itself is just for fun, and nothing wrong with doing computer stuff for fun!

But the networking chops to set something like this up are super practical. My current project has forced me to go from "i know how to use sockets in serious applications" to "i run GCE instance snapshots unmodified in a kernel-level TAP web of lies with tricky DNS overlaid to migrate complex workloads that can't go down to bare metal instances colocated in weird places". This is a pretty radical shift in perspective for a historical "network stuff, got it" guy like me.

In the words of that guy from the 10x programmer meme video: "cloud edge is a hype!" The cloud is terrible in 2025: arthritic Xeon SKUs no one wants marked up 10000%, FinOps is like a casino that knows the whales need to neither win too much nor lose too much: they have active calls to action when the grift is so insane that they know you'll eventually do the books and churn out forever. The security theatre around IAM and shit is like going to the DMV, it's a whole thing to make an S3 bucket now.

There are bright spots: fly is the perfect tool for a busy admin who needs to keep an eye on a bunch of prompt engineers with docker and confidence, but for the most part?

Going back to bare metal is just a strict upgrade, and once you do that, knowledge like the knowledge these folks have from operating this thing? It becomes a whole new set of superpowers over and above standard out of the box networking. Standard networking is great when it meets your needs, but if it's all you know, you don't realize how big on an appetite your business has for wizard stuff.

Re: The Promised LAN

#37

Post by giantg2 »

cptskippy wrote: post #19
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more like a semi-private friends-of-friends network. It wouldn't be surprising if it turned out to have skewed representations as most of these do by nature of the semi-private nature.

What gave you that impression? > The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network...

I can't tell what you are trying to add to the conversation here, or of it's just sarcasm.

Re: The Promised LAN

#38

Post by qualeed »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #33
CursedSilicon wrote: post #7

No description of the games they even play? It's an interesting idea. But it sounds like one big "no girls allowed" kind of treehouse with how minimally forthcoming they are about documentation

This seems like way to much effort for playing video games which can be done easier with discord. With how tight lipped they are with what their actual service is, it gives off file sharing vibes.

Or, hear me out, it's just a group of nerdy friends that wanted to hack something together.

Re: The Promised LAN

#39

Post by qualeed »

PcChip wrote: post #13

This sounds really interesting and something I'd be into no word on how to join though

>As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug.

>This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends’ homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy.

From https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/

Re: The Promised LAN

#40

Post by jimmcslim »

sleepyams wrote: post #35
kentonv wrote: post #28

Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to i…

This is a pretty amazing setup! I think in 2025 I would definitely prefer something like this. However, I think back in "the day" part of what made LAN parties fun was that everyone's PC was so individualized. I remember all of my high school friends and I coming of age and building our PCs. I helped a lot of my friends build their PCs and we all chose different things (such as the amount of RGB LEDs, which I thought…

And a real risk of a shattered CRT screen! I remember carting my bougie 17” Viewsonic around in the back of my Hyundai Excel and wondering if it would pick up a crack along the voyage…
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